European startups prepared for the worst

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My colleagues over at TechCrunch.com have done some great number crunching and come up with a list of startups in CrunchBase that have raised at least $25 million over the past two years. The next two years are generally being referred to as another “nuclear winter” when startups will find it very hard to raise cash. They came up with a list of 160 startups, with Facebook topping the list with $455 million raised over the last two years (the bulk of its total $496M). However, although many of those firms are largely operating in Europe (even though their service may be global), they were not split out from the US firms. So I have done my best to weed out the “European” ones.

Interestingly enough, there are two secondary ticket markets in there, Seatwave and Viagogo. SpinVox, at the top, is fast heading towards becoming a kind of over-arching platform for processing voice into text and putting it anywhere. Adconian plays into the fashionable performance ad space. JumpTap is in the hot mobile search space. DailyMotion and Videojug are in video, and increasingly professional content, while badoo has that multi-lingual social network juice. Only one mobile player so far – Nimbuzz.

Please have a look at the original list and leave a comment if I have missed any out, as I am sure I have.

This is a good starter for ten. But, to really work out who will still be around you’d also need to look at the company’s cashburn and their ability to conserve it relative to their funds in the bank; and, the ability of the company to find other opportunities to fund any gap before the financial tap begins to flow again.

There is a silver lining for those that make it through the next eighteen months: you’ll be extremely well placed. You’ll have less competition because several competitors will have gone to the wall and others will simply not have been able to raise funding.

http://www.mann.com Peter Mann

Germany-based Sevenload, announced that they 30 million euro investment from T-Venture which is a part of Deutsche Telekom. And 10 million euro from Burda. – Also 40 million euro.

As we know, there is not endless amounts of cash to fund businesses with no other revenue generation model and some very well funded startups went pop in 2001 when the markets went cold. So why is funding raised being used as a measure of anything?

as you both probably know, UK companies must report all sorts of things to Companies House. All private companies need to submit accounts at year end. Provided either revenue or balance sheets exceed a threshold amount, the accounts need to include revenue numbers, cash flow etc. Last time I looked, the threshold was £5.4m in annual revenue, can’t recall what the balance sheet had to say.

Also, any UK-based company needs to file forms with Companies House that disclose exactly how much money was raised, from whom and when. The form is called 88(2) and can be purchased for any company at Companies House. I think it costs about £1 per form. Call +44 (0)870 33 33 636, tell them the number of the company that you are interested in and ask them to email you all 88(2)s that the company has ever filed. You may want to also include 88(3)s (shares in exchange for something that is not cash). They will charge your credit card and sell you everything you want to have.

BTW: if you really want to do it right, you need to have a look at the articles of association to see what the preference structure on VC-backed company stock is.

http://www.wecando.biz Ian Hendry

Mike, fair comment. But no one is under any obligation to disclose details of the funding they have received to the press either. So as both are voluntary for private businesses, why do they not report revenues or profit projections, figures that give a better indication of whether they’ll be around in 2 years time…?

This lists are interesting to gossipers, but I question tehri real world value. Tech startups have the same real world commercial pressures as any business. Boo.com would have been topping such a list 8 or 9 years ago and what did that count for?

By the way Mike, I am questioning them not issuing details on the meaningful stuff, not what you report on. I am absolutely sure that if any of the above shared details of how and how quickly they are going to make money then you’d be right on it and letting us have that information.

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